Search This Blog

Growing Cyber

“Why is this video so
slow to load?!” asked my mom is frustration. The year is 2011. The internet
speed is faster than ever.

“That’s a 12 minute
video. The traffic is too much. It’ll take some time” I said. Mom just grew
more frustrated. She didn’t want to wait. She is new to the cyber world. Not
very new; 2 years max. She is only used to the zooming speed of the business
Wi-Fi connection.

For a moment, I paused
and pondered over the growth of the cyber world.

My father has always
been a gadget guy. He would know about every new gadget introduced. So it was
not a shocker when his beautiful daughter (Meeee) started using the internet at
the age of 5. In this generation, toddlers surfing the web is no news. But
remember, I am talking about the year 1999. I can’t say internet wasn’t common
that time. It was. Cyber cafés used to be open in every street because many of
the people did not have computers back then. We had a computer at home (Of
course we had!) with the net connection.

I used to see beautiful
dolls and colourful
pictures when my sister sat on the computer. Being a 5 year old, I was a
stubborn little kid and demanded I get to use the “com-pi-cuter”- as I used to
call it. Though resisted at first, my father grew tired of my whining and let
me use it. He opened up Paint for me and showed me how to colour. I was hooked.
It was amazing to colour without using actual colours!

It was entertaining for
a while. Then I grew bored of it. I wanted to use the internet. I did not know
what it was called then. All I knew was that you could see Barbie pictures in
it. After a lot of whining (again!), my father instructed my sister to teach me
how to use the web- www.barbie.com that is. My sister being 9
years old at the time wasn’t much pleased with her younger sister using the
internet. She was jealous because she never got to use it at my age. She reluctantly
asked me to type “w w w….”. I took around 10 minutes to find all the
letters on the keyboard. I turned to my sister to tell me what to do next. “Hit
enter you idiot! Don’t you know anything?! Urgh!” She screamed and walked away.
She was just displaying the usual tantrums of the older sibling.

Thus I entered the
intricate web called the internet.

Since that day, I slowly
taught myself how to use the web. It was really hard for a child with no
guidance. At times the whole computer would just get stuck and I would slowly
turn and walk away because I had no clue on what to do with it.

If you remember, we did
not have Wi-Fi that time. We had to use a wire to connect the computer to some
socket. You had to type in a password and user name and click ‘connect’.
A weird noise would come up. Everyone that used internet before the Wi-Fi would
know what I am talking about. After the
noise dies, you are connected to the web. Until you disconnect, you won’t be
able to use your landline. If you pick up the phone, the weird noise would
start again and the net connection would die.

Dad used to give me and
my sister half an hour each every Friday to use the internet. Half an hour a
week! Today, half an hour online would
swiftly pass by within seconds. That too the internet then was the slowest you
could imagine. The snail used to drag and drag and drag and finally the page
would load. You could never even imagine loading a video and watching it. The
half an hour given would go off in just loading. But I and my sister, being
young then probably, were satisfied. 25 minutes were all we needed to go to the
Barbie website and play games there. The last 5 minutes, we would just look
here and there figuring out what else to do.

As we grew up, so did
the technology. Dad upgraded the
internet and made it Wi-Fi. We did not have laptops yet then. Therefore a wire
was used to connect the computer to the modem. Internet was available 24/7- but
it was protected by a password. Every Friday, dad would grant us one hour. That
was that. The speed was still dead and slow but we were fine with it because we
were used to that.

As time passed by, dad
started forgetting, intentionally or unintentionally, very much to our benefit,
to switch off the modem. We started using the web almost as often as every day
(Lame. Hah). The cyber speed was very high and it started increasing with every
dying day.

That brings us to today.

“Why is this video so
slow to load?!” asked my mom is frustration.

“Mom!” I sighed. “You
should have used internet in my times. Then you would know what slow is.”

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

After fourteen years of school life, my expectations of a college life were over the roof. It was a long wait and finally, today, my first day of college came along.

At 9:00 AM in the morning, I had already missed my bus and had come to college with dad. I stood there, outside the college gates and took it all in for one last time. This is it. The beginning. A deep breath and I was in.

A senior guided me to my classroom. Four girls were seated, one in each bench. I went and sat next to the prettiest one in a multi coloured dress. We sparked a friendship on the spot. By each passing minute, more students walked in and before long, the class was half full with girls. Then walked in the boys. Five of them. My subject is B.A Functional English; not much demanded by the male crowd. We hoped more would come in later on. Sadly none more.

As we sat there, discussing what college would be like, a lady in blue and white walked it. Frankly, it was hate at first sight. She stood next to one of the…

My first strike =D. Not mine exactly. The KSU held a strike today so classes went on only for 15 minutes and we were let off. Since I had to pay off my first term fees, I went to the office. They made me wait for 2 hours; till all the students had paid their fees. That was the one reason what changed a lot of things. By the time I got out of the office, The college was nearly empty and all the girls had gone home. There were some boys in groups sitting here and there.
As I walked towards the gate, I heard, "chu chu". My heart raced as i foresaw the future. "chu chu" it went again. I turned. 7 to 8 boys were sitting on the steps. "chu chu" was their way of calling me over. I went halfheartedly. I kept turning back to see if my saviour of a friend was anywhere to be seen. No such luck.
"Are those sandals the new fashion?"

I hail from a very democratic country,
India. But if you ask me, I would say that my household is anything but
democratic. Freedom of speech is one main problem we all face; especially girls
like me with a huge mouth. I can start talking and not cease till I feel
satisfied. I am never rude and I make sure of that. I say what I think and
don’t always think about whether the others like it or not. According to me, a
fire in my mind is better put out than let burning.

Recently, I was exaggerating the beauty of the houses, one my father’s and one
his brother’s. The intention in my mind was to let them know how grateful I am
for all their help and how magnificent their hard work was. Too bad that I did
not know it would all strike me back one day. My mom pulled me in and spanked
me with a lecture about how to keep my mouth shut. It turns out you aren’t
supposed to speak about the beauty of things because if some day something
happens to it, I would be blamed. They would say, “She had her e…